Summer Moody's family sues over teen's shooting death on Gravine Island

Summer Moody, 17, died April 25, 2012 after being shot on Gravine Island 10 days earlier. Her family filed a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit against the men they said killed her. (AP Photo)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Summer Moody’s family sued Tuesday seeking at least $1 million from four men and a police agency that they blame for her shooting death at Gravine Island early on the morning of April 15.

Named as defendants were three men present when the 17-year-old Moody was shot, as well as a local property owner and the Alabama Marine Police.

The civil lawsuit was filed in Mobile County Circuit Court.

Moody died 10 days after being struck in the head by rifle fire while she and three teen boys were on the remote island in the Tensaw River. The three boys, Dylan Tyree, Scott Byrd and Daniel Parnell, have been charged with first-degree burglary in connection with break-ins of Gravine Island fishing camps.

Robert Stankoski, lawyer for Moody’s family, said that $1 million is “the minimum amount we’d ask for.” He said, “We’ll certainly allow the jury to make the call on that, but I don’t think the case is worth anything less.”

The defendants include Lonnie Wilmer Davison, William Nicholas Hearn and Larry Dean Duncan. Duncan and Hearn had rifles and fired when they confronted the teens on the island, wounding Moody, according to previous testimony.

The complaint charges that the three had been watching for intruders on the island after tools had been stolen from local fishing camps. The lawsuit described the three as “the armed men.”

“On the weekend of Moody’s death, the armed men were specifically watching and looking for confrontations with anyone who might appear to be suspicious based upon the previous thefts,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit said that the men found the teens and shot at them, wounding Moody.

Hearn, Davison and Duncan took Moody by boat to Cloverleaf Landing, where she was transported to Mobile, according to reports.

The lawsuit also named John Russell Beasley as a defendant. Beasley owns a camp known as the “Crow’s Nest,” near where the shooting took place, according to Stankoski.

Stankoski said that testimony during court hearings indicated that the four men may have reached an agreement to confront anyone in the area. “If it’s an agency or some type of group effort it may create liability on all of them if they all got together and formed the intent for them to be a gang of folks who were watching out for the Gravine Island property,” Stankoski said.

He said, “There was some testimony at the preliminary hearing that the Marine Police told them to take matters into their own hands and defend their own property and again under an agency theory, if they’re acting as agents of the Marine Police or under their direction, that again may create liability.”

He said he would learn more “as we go through the discovery process.”

Will Gunner, chief counsel for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees the Marine Police, said he was unaware of the lawsuit prior to being contacted by the Press-Register. “Until we read the complaint, we can’t make any comment,” he said. “We’ll have to see what it says.”

Lawyers for the other defendants could not be reached for comment.

Two days after Moody’s death, Baldwin County law enforcement officials said the investigation indicated that she had been shot by accident and no state charges were expected to be filed against Duncan, Davison or Hearn. Stankoski said that decision by officials was one reason that the family filed the lawsuit in Mobile County.

“With all the circumstances over here with the DA and sheriff’s department not necessarily agreeing with our position and how we want to proceed on it, I thought maybe moving it to another venue or jurisdiction might just be better,” he said Tuesday.